2005 Christmas Letter
The year started with Ann's resignation from CMC Electronics and the job that brought us to Ottawa seven years before during the Ice Storm of 1998. With a purposeful gap of a week before starting her new job at General Dynamics, we took the opportunity to vacation in North Carolina. At US Customs, with big grins on our faces, we gleefully told them we were both unemployed.
On the way to North Carolina, we stopped in Washington DC for a couple of days. We packed in a lot of things while we were there, visiting the Mall, the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, the Capitol Building, and the Ford Theatre. After Washington, we spent some time in Raleigh, NC with our friend Dave Allen, and returned via the Outer Banks of North Carolina and the historic site at Kittyhawk. The route home included a stop in NYC to see Ross' friend Alistair, and Montreal, where Ann's brother Peter had just moved. Later in the year, we would spend two weekends in Montreal and another in NYC, but we made so many trips there just isn't room to tell about them all.
Ross' most memorable trip this year came in February. He joined a MINI Cooper car rally for a whirlwind weekend trip to Northern Quebec along the James Bay Road. Unfortunately, tours to the big power dams in Radisson were temporarily closed to the public shortly before the group arrived due to terrorism concerns. Instead, Ross and several others opted to take a plane ride over the area. Barely skimming over the snow-covered lakes, they chased thousands of caribou of the George River Herd. Later that day, the group drove to Chisasibi, a Cree village on the coast, so they could walk on the Arctic Ocean. When they returned to their hotel in the evening, they witnessed the most incredible display of Northern Lights that any of them had ever seen. Ross enjoyed the trip, even as a passenger, that he is helping the group plan their next trip this February to St. John's, NL.
In June we attended two beautiful outdoor weddings; Steve & Sarah's and Nil & Chris'. As it happened they were both on the same weekend in different cities, the first in Toronto and the second in Ottawa. Given that it was such a scorcher of a summer, they were both some of the hottest weddings in memory, but in any case we had a blast practicing our ballroom dancing.
We spent Canada Day in the Ottawa area for the first time this year. Ann's parents John & Cynthia visited for the weekend. The four of us ventured downtown and toured the new War Museum and the Museum of Civilization. Then we joined the large crowd at Parliament Hill and stayed for the evening to watch the fireworks show.
In July, Ross began a series of new contracts that has kept him busier than he's been at any time since 2000. The work involves creating a new version of the software that he owns and licenses out to media companies. At present, it appears that this in turn is spawning more contracts and licensees that will likely keep him busy until mid-2007.
August included a summer vacation trip to Moosonee and Manitoulin. The trip started with an eight-hour drive to Cochrane followed by a four-hour train ride on the Polar Bear Express the following day. During the two days we were in Moosonee, we visited Moose Factory Island and the historic Hudson's Bay Company site, took in a hike in the muskeg and a boat trip out onto James Bay, and Ross flew around the area in a Cessna for an hour or so. The second half of the week in Manitoulin and Tobermory largely featured running from thunderstorms and, as we later found out, some small tornadoes too.
In October, we decided to take another week off and head back to North Carolina, and this time into South Carolina too. We stayed for a day in Myrtle Beach and visited an Alligator Zoo and the Brookgreen Sculpture Gardens. In Charleston, ee stayed at a beautiful BnB and had a wonderful time walking around the old town. On the return trip, we took in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and began the Blue Ridge Parkway, but the tail-end of a hurricane caught up with us so we decided to cut the trip short. We drove straight to Bolton for Thanksgiving, stopping only once at the Luray Caverns in northern Virginia.
A seemingly eternal struggle came to an end on November 4 for Platinex, the company run by Ross' Dad, and which Ross has worked for part time for the last decade or so. Platinex started trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol PTX. More a beginning than an end, it's an important milestone nonetheless, and we couldn't be happier for Mom and Dad.
The very same day that Platinex got its listing, both sets of our parents arrived in Carp for the weekend, to receive the best news of all, and learn just why we took so many trips this year: we are expecting our first child in May 2006!
